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My experience of addiction

In this incredibly honest and thought-provoking article, we hear from an anonymous doctor who has struggled with addiction. The nature of addiction is a subject of interest to a broad range of scientific disciplines, from medicine to psychology, psychotherapy and...

A cognitive therapy programme for hearing impairment: reducing avoidance and mental distress

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), a psychotherapeutic treatment method, is most commonly used to treat anxiety and depression. Newly published results from a controlled, clinical study demonstrate that an adapted CBT programme is useful for several common challenges in aural rehabilitation;...

Thyroid ultrasound elastography: does nodule stiffness predict malignancy?

Approximately 50% of the general population has a thyroid nodule while 5-15% of these are malignant [1]. A major challenge, therefore, is how to detect the malignant nodules for appropriate, timely treatment and avoid unnecessary, costly investigations for the remainder....

COVID-19 innovations

The coronavirus pandemic has mobilised medical innovators in an amazing way. We take a look at just a few of the hundreds of innovative products and techniques that have been developed and used in the last few weeks. Some of...

Pre-clinical development of magnetic delivery of therapy to middle and inner ears

Why are we developing this technology? A key problem in drug delivery is getting the therapy to the right place in the body, which is especially challenging for targets that are small, deep and are protected or surrounded by anatomical...

Wound moisture sensing in traumatic wounds

Wounds can be small and unpleasant, or may be large and life-threatening. The skin is a physical and an immunological barrier to infection, and any defect in the integrity of the skin may enable bacterial or fungal invasion. The successful...

Developing an Innovation for ENT – from Idea to Market: how ‘e-i’ did it

Background endoscope-i (e-i) Ltd was incorporated into Companies House on December 3rd, 2012 following eight months of developing our first project, a simple iPhone adapter for endoscopes. Of the three founding shareholders, two are ENT surgeons and one a lecturer...

Establishing a medical device company: an ENTrepreneur’s experience

In 2004, while I was suturing the mucopericondrial flaps for a septoplasty, I thought to myself, “there must be an easier and faster way of doing this”. Even though I had no formal training in business or medical device development,...

Precision and personalised genomic and epigenomic medicine in audiology/hearing loss

A detailed look at the pathogenesis of acquired hearing loss due to exposure to ototoxicity during pregnancy or shortly after birth. Insights from genomic medicine have shown that, along with environmental factors causing epigenetic alterations, hearing loss may be caused...